Political agreement in Washington may be in short supply, but bipartisan consensus does exist. Both Republicans and Democrats increasingly reject U.S. military combat deployments. As debt skyrockets, tolerance for waste plummets. Both party bases prefer Washington spends money domestically rather than abroad.
Bipartisan financial propriety does not extend to the United Nations . Too often, left-wingers embrace the UN as a means to pay homage to the organization’s lofty principles absent understanding of the corruption and mismanagement that permeates the organization. Few large bureaucracies are immune to waste, fraud, and abuse, but the U.N.’s problem is successive secretaries-general have preferred to use their perch for perks and travel than to manage and reform.
While conservatives argue the U.N. rot goes too deep and that the United States should just walk away , a nuanced approach might recognize and reinforce U.N. success while shutting down failure.
Consider peacekeeping: U.N. peacekeeping can be economical compared to unilateral American deployments, but the U.N.’s peacekeeping record is spotty. U.N. missions succeeded in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Côte d'Ivoire, but other U.N. peacekeeping missions are expensive failures. Here, Cyprus, Lebanon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo take the cake.
The U.N. Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) may seem a bargain with a budget of only $57 million per year. Sixty years since its founding and a half-century after Turkey invaded and ethnically cleansed a third of the island, it is unclear what those funds support. The threat of Turkish aggression is real, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan does not fear peacekeepers. Just last year, Turkey shattered the Rubicon by attacking U.N. forces in the buffer zone. To protect Cyprus today requires a fighting force, not an impotent one. Secretary-General António Guterres would advance peace if he withdrew UNFICYP in favor of a European or American force able to defend Cypriot territory and waters while providing Cyprus with a deterrent capability to launch missiles deep into Turkey.
The United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL), meanwhile, costs almost a half billion dollars annually. Prior to 2006, the world’s densest deployment of peacekeepers repeatedly failed to report Hezbollah terrorist attack preparations for fear of angering the group, even when Hezbollah stole UNIFIL vehicles and uniforms to use in attacks against Israel. Following the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, the U.N. charged UNIFIL with helping the Lebanese Armed Forces keep a roughly seven-mile zone along Israel’s borders free of armed militias. Israel accepted a ceasefire only after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that with its augmented mandate, UNIFIL would prevent Hezbollah’s rearmament. She lied. Iran replenished Hezbollah’s arsenal, and UNIFIL looked the other way.
Today, UNIFIL does more to shield Hezbollah than promote peace. Diplomats might fret, but if UNIFIL disbanded, its demise could be the tough love Beirut needs to assert sovereignty; if not, UNIFIL’s withdrawal will prevent its personnel from becoming human shields for Hezbollah. Either way, withdrawal would force diplomats to deal with reality.
The most wasteful and counterproductive U.N. peacekeeping mission is the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). It combines the worst aspects of UNIFIL and UNRWA and costs the U.N. more than $1 billion annually. In 1994, when Rwanda freed itself of those who committed the anti-Tutsi Genocide, UN camps welcomed the génocidaires with open arms. Just as Palestinian terrorists took over UNRWA camps, Hutu extremists transformed MONUSCO camps into incitement centers and armed training bases. MONUSCO gets worse. To visit restaurants in eastern Congo is to see drunk MONUSCO personnel cavort with prostitutes. Under the guise of supporting peace, MONUSCO has also used its aircraft to aid the infiltration of génocidaires into Rwanda.
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It really is simple. To do its job, MONUSCO should disarm militants, relocate camps away from borders, and arrest those guilty of war crimes. If MONUSCO does not, it should end.
Guterres must understand: Critics do not threaten the UN or cause war; his own tolerance of corrupted agencies does. It is time to trim the fat, starting with Cyprus, Lebanon, and Congo.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential. He is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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